Is mind-reading now a reality?

A new study has decoded data from non-invasive brain scans and used them to reconstruct language and meaning from stories that people hear, see, imagine

The technology to decode our thoughts is drawing ever closer. Neuroscientists at the University of Texas have for the first time decoded data from non-invasive brain scans and used them to reconstruct language and meaning from stories that people hear, see or even imagine.

In a new study published in Nature Neuroscience, Alexander Huth and colleagues successfully recovered the gist of language and sometimes exact phrases from functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) brain recordings of three participants.

Technology that can create language from brain signals could be enormously useful for people who cannot speak due to conditions such as motor neurone disease. At the same time, it raises concerns for the future privacy of our thoughts.

Language decoding models, also called “speech decoders”, aim to use recordings of a person’s brain activity to discover the words they hear, imagine or say.

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Until now, speech decoders have only been used with data from devices surgically implanted in the brain, which limits their usefulness. Other decoders which used non-invasive brain activity recordings have been able to decode single words or short phrases, but not continuous language.

The new research used the blood oxygen level dependent signal from fMRI scans, which shows changes in blood flow and oxygenation levels in different parts of the brain. By focusing on patterns of activity in brain regions and networks that process language, the researchers found their decoder could be trained to reconstruct continuous language (including some specific words and the general meaning of sentences).